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Tuesday, July 23, 2013

How CIA black ops teams are hacking into computers worldwide

In a detailed account on Foreign Policy,
the Central intelligence Agency, in concert with the National Security
Agency, has been demonstrated to conduct what is referred to as "black
bag" operations, or the manual hacking of a target's computer by
uploading spyware onto anything ranging from personal laptops to
large-scale servers. When a specific target is out of the NSA's reach,
it calls on the CIA to do, in its own parlance, a "surreptitious entry."

In such an operation, a crack CIA team breaks into the place of
interest and does one of the following, depending on the situation:
install spy-ware, bug phones, hack data switching centers, and copy
backup files and disks. It is a procedure often used when hacking
remotely is not possible.

Having already conducted over 100 such operations, it is a rate that, according to Matthew Aid,
has not been seen since the Cold War. And the targets are not as narrow
as one might think; in addition to foreign governments and militaries, multinational corporations
and individuals with terrorist ties have been hacked as well. From a
regional perspective, everyone is a target; operations have been
undertaken in East Asia (particularly China), the Middle East, and South
Asia. An example of such would be the tapping of fiber-optic cables at a
switch center in a certain South Asian country, allowing the NSA to
listen in real time highly sensitive communications.

This is also in addition to the NSA bugging
of foreign embassies in Latin America and Western Europe in addition
various European Union offices in Washington and New York. While the
former are areas of strategic importance, the latter has caused much
outrage, since these are supposedly allies to the U.S.

How important are such operations to national security? Or is it more
unethical, wanton spying? Considering how old the art of espionage is,
and that these operations are a modernization of what was done during
the Cold War, it should not come as a complete surprise that the CIA
still conducts these operations. What is surprising are the sheer number
of operations being conducted, and how we do not know how effective it
truly is.

Considering the amount of sensitive information received
through such operations, we may never know not only how effective black
bag operations are, but how expansive they are.

These black bag operations are one of many tools in the CIA's
ever-expanding toolkit; however, they has become a significant tool just
by how often it has been utilized, particularly after 9/11. It is an
expanding operation that has shown unprecedented cooperation between two
former rivals with no signs of scaling back.